1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information reading apparatus such as a handheld personal device with a screen for displaying stored images and more specifically to an information reading apparatus capable of wirelessly reading a printed code such as one-dimensional bar codes, two-dimensional codes, printed characters, or stored data from RFID tags and IC cards.
2. Description of the Related Art
Handheld personal devices such as mobile telephones and personal digital assistant (PDA) are provided with an LCD screen and a key arrangement for allowing the user to enter data, switch screens, point a menu item on the screen and select a desired operating function and mode of the device. To make the device easy to use, a pointing device is provided on the rear surface of the device as disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication 2004-32548.
In prior art display systems, it is the usual practice to group and organize items to be displayed into a tree structure as shown in FIG. 14. If the user wants to select one of items B221 and B222, he has to select the item A2 on the root screen A0, which is initially displayed, to open the selected screen image and proceeds to select the item A22 on the screen of item A2 to open the image of the selected item A22, which shows symbols urging the user to choose one of the items B221 and B222. While this tree-structured approach allows the user to access a desired item with no knowledge of the whole structure, the number of successively key operations would become substantial and take a long time to reach the intended item. If the user desires to change screens from the item B222 to the adjacent item B311, for example, he must first return to the root image A0 and then proceed to successively select screen images of items A3, A31 and B311, with a total of six key operations. This problem can be solved only if a large screen is used. This solution is impractical for handheld personal devices.